Sorry I didn't answer your question. Per the owners manual, the AVR 7200 (in 7 channel surround mode) puts out 100 watts per channel into 8 ohms. Nothing about 5 channel surround mode which is what it would be configured for operating at. When I run movies, I like it loud. When my wife plays music, she also likes it loud, so I suppose that over time, the drivers on the center channel were worn out.

I personally found a single M2 to be a downgrade from a VP100. I'm not seeing why an M2 for center channel would be preferable over a VP150. Especially for male vocals, my VP150 is an improvement over the VP100. I can't imagine what a VP160 or VP180 would do.

I had considered stands for the QS8's, but let me describe my nightmare room. The great room dimensions are about 17' x 17'. Ceiling is 'cathedral' height. There is a balcony over 1/3 the room, the rest of the room has cathedral height ceilings (echo chamber).

Only one wall in the room is a complete wall. Across from the complete wall is the dining room, so a good portion (but not all) of that wall is open to the dining room.

WIth the complete wall to your back, the left wall is two tall windows separated by a fireplace that extends into the room approx. 2 feet. Opposite the window wall is the front foyer with no wall in the great room.

Into this nightmare, I have an old school Mitsubishi 65" rear projection TV, big and bulky. It's situated in one corner of the room (where the dining room wall and the window wall meet) and is on a diagonal facing into the room. On top of the TV sits my M22's and the VP150. However, as the TV is on a diagonal, with the front speakers facing into the room on a diagonal, there's no real place to station the left rear and right rear speaker without intruding into a 'walkway' or seating area. There's really no truly defined 'rear' of the room.

While I really like the new house, the old one was a nice simple 16'x9' rectangle, single story flat ceiling room with minimal openings with a definite 'front' and 'rear' (none of this diagonal BS).

One of these days I'll partition an area of the basement and turn it into a man cave/home theater room with a defined front and rear but in the meantime I have to deal with the echo chamber.

Hawk, it's all very puzzling, however, as soon as I read in your post that it's a "great room", with cathedral ceiling and that you and your wife "like it loud", I thought, oh-oh, he's had the VP-150 set to "Large" and he's clipped the H/K receiver and burned out the drivers.

Drivers don't "just wear out". They'll go on working for 20 to 30 years so long as they're not overdriven with an amplifier that's clipping or unless there's an original manufacturing defect. In the latter case, they'll fail very quickly. Crossovers are rarely defective, although a cold solder joint or cracked circuit board could be the problem, and that would be hard to see or detect.

Given the size of the room, and your listening tastes (loud), an M2 center (per JohnK) would be totally inadequate. I'd suggest at least a new VP150 or, the VP180.

As to audible differences in your VP150 and the v3 version, they'd be subtle and wouldn't be a problem in terms of tonal matching to your existing M22s.

Alan, i would venture to say if he is driving the amp into the clipping region with his current vp-150, the same will happen with a new 150 with the same result... 3 blown drivers... The best most realistic solution is a vp-180. All joking aside, the 180 will play much louder with less power required. The HK amps can handle a 4ohm load quite well from what i have read. To pressurize a huge room of the size you are talking about hawk, the 150/22's seem quite small.. you might be able to just upgrade the center and leave the 22's alone. The number one thing that kills drivers is "bad power" or an amp being driven beyond is capabilities.

Hawk, could you venture to guess what the total volume of the great room+ associated adjacent rooms would be, a total volume number would help determine if what you have is realistic or not, a 150 with all of it's drivers working may in fact be just fine.

Since a speaker is basically a coil of wire, it is pretty hard to make a piece of wire fail. As Alan said " drivers don't wear out". In the 70's/80's when woofers were were paper and foam, the foam/glue would deteriorate over time. However, with the new materials used today this is not the problem it was 30 to 40 years ago...

Yes, I'd basically agree with you. I too thought his system is small for such a large space, and while the H/Ks drive 4-ohm loads just fine, I'm not certain the increased sensitivity of a VP180 would be sufficient to reach the loudness levels he prefers.

"Loud" covers quite a range of personal taste; Axiom colleagues of mine sometimes listen at levels that are very very loud, far higher than I'm comfortable with. If that's the case with Hawk, I'd prefer to see him use an outboard power amplifier for the center channel, something in the range of 200 watts or more. He could use the H/k's internal amps for the front left and right and surround channels.

Alan, I was going to bring up the idea of an outboard amp, i actually had it typed up and ready to go in my last reply.. However, i decided not to bring that idea up as i wanted to reduce "my spending of his money" if you will.

Hawk, when i moved to my current house i had to buy larger outboard amp's because my old one was being driven into the clipping region due to the increase room size, i am in a someone similar situation as yourself, moving to a house with MUCH more airspace. (the amp has led's that would notify the user if the amp was being driven into the clipping region). The house i am in now has a family room that is open to the kitchen, entry way, and formal dining room. So, there is a LOT of air space. I have M-60's and a vp-180. My previous amp was a Marantz mm9000 rated for 135W per channel. My new amps are rated for 250W per channel at 8ohm and 500w at 4ohms. With clean power you can push speakers much farther without damage. I decided to buy more power than i would ever need to prevent damage to the speakers.